It has been well documented in history that a defining factor that can help win elections is the media. The media has such a broad range of connecting with people it can literally make the difference between winning and losing. There are multiple ways to to provide information to such a wide audience and journalists have taken advantage of this and are posting content to social media. Politicians have also realized the wide audience that they can reach by using social media. A classic example of this would be Barack Obama’s rise to presidency. He was the first U.S president to realize he can gather more votes using the social web sphere, this action as a result made history when he was announced as the first African American President of the United States.
In Australia however it seems to have taken a step in a different direction. The 2013 election between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott was notably filled with slanderous content against the labor party. This is an example of bad journalism and news broadcasting. Rupert Murdoch filled his papers with anti labor content throughout the country. The front page spread of The Daily Telegraph with its slogan ‘Kick this mob out’ caused massive controversy throughout the country, with many labor supporters arguing against The Daily Telegraph for not having a single mention of Tony Abbott and the Liberal party. This sparked multiple retaliation videos and social media posts towards Rupert Murdoch. Get Up a response video telling Mr Murdoch that we can choose our own government was a huge success throughout Australia with 779 thousand views on YouTube. It tells that the slanderous work of Mr Murdoch shouldn’t decide the votes for Australian people and they should vote for what they believe.
This example just shows the power that media moguls have over the media. They can alter the media to abide with their opinions and in the end that is not good journalism.
journalism 101 